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How do you build your community?


Skadi
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So as a fairly new site, mine has a pretty decent abundance of players, but a lot of them came to specifically play with me or either of my other two staff and thus they aren't as involved with threading with each other. While this is awesome and we're basically spoiled for threads, it has started to become a bit overwhelming to be threading with every single one and not start feeling like we're being piled on. So, what I've been hoping to do is bring in a bunch of other members who will mesh well with the people we already have and help us world build a little in our little sandbox world. 

 

So the question is, what do you do or have you done to get players on your sites? 

 

So far, we've advertised on a bunch of resource forums, here and on rpg-d as well as linking back to most who post in our advertisement forums. We offer site currency bonuses for member referrals, and also incentives for posting want ads on resource forums where it's allowed. We've had advertising events (only one person participated), and we're actively working with members to get them to reach out to people they know who might be interested, but it seems like our influx has sort of stalled. 

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Attracting new blood to an RPG of any kind is a sort of hit and miss endeavor. Striking the right chord with the right people is never easy. All three of my sites depend mainly on word-of-mouth since I really dislike advertising (I don't write very good ads). I have a core group that has been with me forever so the word-of-mouth bit is drying up. I've had moderate luck advertising on various groups in the Yahoo Group replacement Groups.io and PbeM2.

 

A site that I'm on used to do "random writing partner pairings". I cannot remember how it worked, but you signed up for it, those signed up with randomly paired and given a scenario to write out. It was actually fun and seemed like a good way to encourage people to meet up and write together. At my sites, we encourage peple to put up Plot Requests that they would love to write and see if someone takes the plot.

 

Even with doing all you can, sadly, it is often hard to get people to come out of their shell and explore the unfamiliar (people they've never written with). It can be scary. Personally, I love it, but I have one seriously old player that flat refuses. He'll wait months for my characters to be freed up to write.

 

Now, with all that said, my wild west site had just my little core group for over a year and out of the blue, we've had an influx. Everyone is off writing with each other (and me, I'm the lone admin) and seem to be having a great time. I think this brings us back to my opening statement... it's rather hit and miss getting in new blood and takes patience and perseverance.

 

Good luck!

 

 

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Someone somewhere went to sleep and dreamed us all alive.
Dreams get pushed around a lot, and I doubt if we'll survive.
We won't get to wake up, dreams were born to disappear.
And I'm pretty sure that none of us are here.
~ None of Us Here by Jim Stafford ~

 

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I totally understand your frustration there. When I first started my site, hardly anyone would plot outside their circle, but now it's not really a problem.

 

What I can advise doing is maybe, when talking to a new member or something, off-handedly saying something like "oh you should plot with xyz because their chars would mesh with yours!" Maybe even linking their app or directory link. Or maybe a character or member spotlight, randomly chosen so it's not a popularity contest. It also helps to use your characters to bridge the gaps, like if your character is friends with two members' chars, then you can maybe do a group thread and bam, you've got those two members talking. Also--IC events. Big group threads or potential to jump into open ones.

 

Also make sure you acknowledge everyone in chat, because sometimes people just need some nurturing to come out of their shell, but once they do, they'll begin talking more and making more connections. Then you get to sit back and watch them rp with other people!

 

An even easier way to build community is to just have a game night. I prefer Cards Against Humanity online, since it's easy and everyone knows it, plus it makes everyone laugh. When the members bond over it, they'll naturally want to rp together. In my experience with my site, these things have almost always worked.

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I completely understand this, because it's what I've been having to deal with myself for a long time. I have a group of close friends I RP with, but none of them really RP with each other. So, I get overloaded with threads and things to work out/write and everyone else is basically left waiting until I catch up. It can be super frustrating for me at times, and makes me not want to do much when it piles and piles and piles. My site is currently pretty small, so that doesn't help much, either! Finding new members can be really difficult, especially trying to get them to stay or get past starting an app or even posting for the first time. I've had members put in really great effort into their app then never come back. Not sure why or what happened, they just disappeared.

 

I think the best you can really do is just get your site out there in any way you can, by word of mouth or advertisements. Replying to threads on here or other RP forums that are looking for specific roleplays....etc. Sometimes it takes a while to get anyone new to show up, while other days you'll get like five at once. I think it probably just depends on the site subject and the time of year. You just have to wait and hope you strike gold with someone new that could potentially help bring in more of their friends. 

Just keep trying whatever you can. You'll find new blood eventually. As for getting people to RP out of their inner circle....that's harder, lol. People are shy or comfortable with their friends and not really interested in wanting to RP out of that circle, at least in my experience. The only way it's worked for me with my friends is if I bring someone else into the group like hey! This character could easily be connected to so and so and maybe we can do something like this..... just to try and get the ball rolling.

 

Not sure that helped or even contributed to the conversation much, lmao, but best of luck.

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I feel that advertising can only get so far and just how many people advertising can bring tends to depend on what your board is themed around. Relatively unknown series and original boards tend to struggle to catch anyone's interest whereas overdone series have the problem of competition.

 

I find that your best road to success is building up a network of friends who all role-play that you can convince to join your board. That way you can set up a solid base to work with. New members are a lot more likely to join a forum with ten active members than they are with only two or three.

 

My second recommendation would to be assess the registration flow of your forum. When I was looking for fantasy themed forums to join about a year back, I found that that a lot of sites failed to provide an easily accessible few paragraphs describing what exactly the premise is. This particular example likely applies largely to boards with an original setting, but in general, I feel a board's registration flow can  put a potential member off from joining.

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Fodlan Chronicles - A Fire Emblem Based RP Forum
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My core player base is very small... So, it's both easy and difficult to get them to do anything outside of RPing. Sometimes, I feel like I have to nag at them like a parent to remind them to sign up to this if they want to do it, or input their opinion on this if they want to do it, and it's just... 😐 /SHAKES/ XD But so far, we've done a movie night and now we'll be doing our first Secret Santa. In general, I try to encourage everyone to chat on the chat and greet one another, and plot on the chat, etc. I think breaking the ice and getting them to chat with one another helps foster community within one another. On the downlow, I'll also suggest two characters to play with one another, especially for newbies. Like "oh, I think your character and X's character would have an interesting dynamic! Why don't you two plot?" Type deal. It really helped out in the beginning. xD Sometimes, I think dropping hints like that still helps depending on the individual.

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These are all amazing ideas, some of which I've attempted in the past or currently do on the site, but it's been hit-or-miss most days. I do think that @Mayu could be partially right about it being a relatively less popular series (ie. Shadowhunters/The Magicians) but I'll keep looking into that as well. 

 

I am curious, @Zelkova & @ammut how do you implement your game nights? Via discord chat/voice chat, or some other method? Also, Zelky how are you doing your Secret Santa?

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